Skin Soothing Bath Salts

Following suit with last week's anti-itch cream, let's continue to focus on how we can relieve our dry, itchy, or bug-bitten skin. I had ankle surgery about 3 months ago now, and my scar can certainly act up and cause me all sorts of grief. And as you learned last week, mosquitoes apparently find me delicious!

Now that I can actually enjoy a good soak (you can't soak your surgery site for quite some time!), I am taking advantage. I've used my sore muscle soak as a lovely way to rest & recover from physical therapy, but sometimes you just want to soothe and treat your skin. This bath salt recipe has done wonders for my dry & shedding skin, swollen and tight skin, and itchy scar (the joys of surgery recovery!). It's also helped out wonderfully when my legs were assaulted by mosquitoes my first day by the pool! Ah, the irony...

Anyway, here is my very soothing salt recipe for when you are itchy or your skin just needs a little extra TLC.

Skin Soothing Bath Salts
1 cup epsom salt
2 Tbsp baking soda
1/4 c ground oats (or oat flour)
10-20 drops essential oils of choice*
1/4 tsp trauma oil
1 Tbsp castille soap
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp dried lavender
1 tsp dried rosemary

Dilute your essential oils in the trauma oil & castille soap. Don't stir too much, or it will get foamy! Pour your oil mix into your salts and stir until evenly distributed. Add your baking soda, and stir again until evenly distributed. For this salt mix, I like to grind my herbs before adding them. You can do this with a spice grinder, coffee grinder, or good old mortar & pestle (which is what I use!). This is both because it helps get rid of plant parts creating a ring in your tub (if you don't use a sachet, which I usually don't), and because I worried the ground oats would get funky if they absorbed anything so I like to use the ground herbs as a buffer to soak up anything first. If dried herbs aren't your thing, you can leave them out but might want to add the same plants to your oil selection. Add your ground oats (or oat flour) LAST! Oats tend to soak up any liquid they come in contact with, so I like to add them last, especially if making a large batch, to allow all the other ingredients to absorb the oils first.

Use 1/2-1 cup for a foot bath, or 1-2 cups for a full bath. Let everything dissolve well before hopping in (I personally like to wait 10-15 minutes to give the herbs time to "steep").

The recipe as listed above is for 1-3 uses. I like to make a large batch in advance, typically tripling the amounts above (resulting in about 4.5 cups of soak). If you decide to make a large batch, make sure to store your soak in an airtight glass container.

*I tend to favor lavender, camphor, chamomile, and sandalwood in equal parts. Another lovely combination would be frankincense, myrrh, and sandalwood, although I would probably switch up the herbs (possibly to something like lavender, chamomile, and thyme?) or leave them out.

Some other beneficial plants/oils which are technically included via the trauma oil & dried herbs include calendula, arnica, st. john's wort, basil, and rosemary. And there are even more oils purported for their skin care properties such as thyme, tea tree, eucalyptus, melissa, lemongrass...the list really does go on based on your needs! I've put together a small chart to help you identify which herbs/oils you may want to use in your skin soothing bath salts (citruses were discluded because they can be too strong or cause photo sensitivity):